Problem with Memory size on 16gb card. 11GB free on PC, but only 84 RAW+jpeg free?

Hey guys,
So ever since I've been taking RAW+Jpeg on my Olympus E-PL1, I noticed a strange thing. If I erase the photos through the camera, I get the memory space back.

But when I erase either just the RAW or the RAW and JPEG through a computer, the camera doesn't recognize the increase in storage. At one point, I had almost completely exhausted my card, but erased a bunch of photos via the computer. Right now, it's sitting on 11gb of free space, as stated on Windows Explorer, but on my E-PL1, it only recognize 84 RAW+jpeg free. I could only increase it when I erase through the camera.

So I have two questions: 1st, how can I make the camera realize that there's all that empty space? 2nd, am I able to erase just the RAW file through the camera? A lot of times, the Jpeg is fine and I don't need the RAW for post-processing, or I already dumped the RAW on my computer and I want to erase the RAW on the camera, but keep the Jpeg.

After I download my pictures to my computer, I reformat the SD card as soon as I get it back into my camera. I'm a Panasonic guy (rather than Olympus), but that might fix the problem. That won't help, however, in keeping the jpegs on the camera, of course. (Reformatting each time was a hint I got from a Luminous Landscape video. They felt that is the best way to ensure the cleanest and most reliable card for the next set of images.)

As others mentioned above, I reformat the card before each shoot for two reasons:
1 - I want as much free space as I can get, I don't want to be chimping to free up space while the shot I'm after gets away.
2 - As mentioned above, it may reduce the likelihood of card failure or corruption.

You computer hard disk is much the same. You need to defrag it fairly regularly to maintain best performance and available capacity.

I put a selection of pictures on my iPhone if i want to show them to people rather than use the low res display on the camera.

Re the RAW - you could do that through explorer (if you're on windows). I seem to remember by Oly DSLR has a setting to just erase the JPG or RAW or both when deleting a file but I don't know about the EPL1

Consider the SD card a temporary storage device for taking photos. Get the onto your hard drive ASAP and back up to an exteral hard drive or other device (buy one if you need - they are pretty cheap these days).

I reformat my card after each use using camera's reformat option. It is very quick and I never have a problem.

Consider the SD card a temporary storage device for taking photos. Get the onto your hard drive ASAP and back up to an exteral hard drive or other device (buy one if you need - they are pretty cheap these days).

I reformat my card after each use using camera's reformat option. It is very quick and I never have a problem.

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Actually, thankfully, it did recognize the stuff I moved back on to the card after the reformat. Now, I have 564 RAW+Jpeg left =D

I download my photos from camera to computer HD and back up to an external HD too. Then I re-format the camera card. External hard-drives are now so cheap it's a no-brainer. I saw an ad last week for 1TB Fujitsu HD for less than £60 and there are lots of similar deals from other manufacturers out there.
But recently I've started to get one or two ancient CDs (10 years+) showing signs of failure. They don't carry critical data but from now on I'll be using 'archival' quality discs when the need arises.

Are you sure that your PC's operating system isn't just moving the files int o some sort of deleted files bin and pretending that there's free space? It took me a while for me to figure our how to disabuse Gnome of the notion that this was a good idea on my system. Windows has some sort of trash/recycle bin. Should you empty it before ejecting?

Just a thought. I'm not a Windows user, so don't come down too hard on me if that's not a problem in Windows land.

That's interesting. Never tried it on my Olympus but my previous camera, a Sony wouldn't do it.

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Slightly different scenario, but I regularly pop the SD card from my E-P1 into my EOS 500D so that I can view the images on a decent 920K screen (hint, hint Olympus). It will also show all of the important shooting info, too. Some brands of camera appear more tolerant of reading 'foreign' jpegs than others. From some unscientific testing, Canon and Olympus cameras seem happy to display images on cards from themselves, Panasonic, Nikon and Ricoh. Same for Panasonic except they don't display shooting info from Nikon images and can't zoom in either. Ricoh and Nikon cameras can't view images from any of the others, and Nikons won't even display images taken on another Nikon.